The Critique of Pure Reason

Published in 1797, the Critique of Pure Reason is considered to be one of the foremost philosophical works ever written. In the Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant explores the foundation of human knowledge and its limits, as well as man's ability to engage in metaphysics.

At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails

Paris, 1933: Three contemporaries meet over apricot cocktails at the Bec-de-Gaz bar on the rue Montparnasse. They are the young Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and longtime friend Raymond Aron, a fellow philosopher who raves to them about a new conceptual framework from Berlin called phenomenology. "You see," he says, "if you are a phenomenologist, you can talk about this cocktail and make philosophy out of it!"

Rediscovering Americanism: And the Tyranny of Progressivism

In Rediscovering Americanism, Mark R. Levin revisits the founders' warnings about the perils of overreach by the federal government and concludes that the men who created our country would be outraged and disappointed to see where we've ended up. Levin returns to the impassioned question he's explored in each of his best-selling books: How do we save our exceptional country? Because our values are in such a precarious state, he argues that a restoration to the essential truths on which our country was founded has never been more urgent.

The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left

What is "the big lie" of the Democratic Party? That conservatives - and President Donald Trump in particular - are fascists. Nazis, even. In a typical comment, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow says the Trump era is reminiscent of "what it was like when Hitler first became chancellor." But in fact, this audacious lie is a complete inversion of the truth. Yes, there is a fascist threat in America - but that threat is from the Left and the Democratic Party.

From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds

What is human consciousness, and how is it possible? This question fascinates thinking people from poets and painters to physicists, psychologists, and philosophers. From Bacteria to Bach and Back is Daniel C. Dennett's brilliant answer, extending perspectives from his earlier work in surprising directions, exploring the deep interactions of evolution, brains, and human culture.

The Closing of the American Mind

In one of the most important books of our time, Allan Bloom, a professor of social thought at the University of Chicago and a noted translator of Plato and Rousseau, argues that the social and political crisis of 20th-century America is really an intellectual crisis.

American Philosophy: A Love Story

In American Philosophy, John Kaag - a disillusioned philosopher at sea in his marriage and career - stumbles upon a treasure trove of rare books on an old estate in the hinterlands of New Hampshire that once belonged to the Harvard philosopher William Ernest Hocking. The library includes notes from Whitman, inscriptions from Frost, and first editions of Hobbes, Descartes, and Kant. As he begins to catalog and preserve these priceless books, Kaag rediscovers the very tenets of American philosophy.

Written Out of History: The Forgotten Founders Who Fought Big Government

In the earliest days of our nation, a handful of unsung heroes - including women, slaves, and an Iroquois chief - made crucial contributions to our republic. They pioneered the ideas that led to the Bill of Rights, the separation of powers, and the abolition of slavery. Yet their faces haven't been printed on our currency or carved into any cliffs. Instead they were marginalized, silenced, or forgotten - sometimes by an accident of history, sometimes by design.

Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America

Must the sins of America's past poison its hope for the future? Lately the American Left, withdrawing into the ivied halls of academe to rue the nation's shame, has answered "yes" in both word and deed. In Achieving Our Country, one of America's foremost philosophers challenges this lost generation of the Left to understand the role it might play in the great tradition of democratic intellectual labor that started with writers like Walt Whitman and John Dewey.

Phenomenology of Spirit

Perhaps one of the most revolutionary works of philosophy ever presented, The Phenomenology of Spirit is Hegel's 1807 work that is in numerous ways extraordinary. A myriad of topics are discussed, and explained in such a harmoniously complex way that the method has been termed Hegelian dialectic. Ultimately, the work as a whole is a remarkable study of the mind's growth from its direct awareness to scientific philosophy, proving to be a difficult yet highly influential and enduring work.

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

The Founding Fathers tried to protect us from the threat they knew, the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy. Today, our political order faces new threats, not unlike the totalitarianism of the 20th century. We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.

How to Live: Or a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

This question obsessed Renaissance writers, none more than Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, perhaps the first recognizably modern individual. A nobleman, public official, and winegrower, he wrote free-roaming explorations of his thought and experience, unlike anything written before. He called them essays, meaning “attempts” or “tries.” He put whatever was in his head into them: his tastes in wine and food, his childhood memories, the way his dog’s ears twitched when it was dreaming, as well as the religious wars....

A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age

Claude Shannon was a tinkerer, a playful wunderkind, a groundbreaking polymath, and a digital pioneer whose insights made the Information Age possible. He constructed fire-breathing trumpets and customized unicycles, outfoxed Vegas casinos, and built juggling robots, but he also wrote the seminal text of the Digital Revolution. That work allowed scientists to measure and manipulate information as objectively as any physical object. His work gave mathematicians and engineers the tools to bring that world to pass.

The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism

Hayek gives the main arguments for the free-market case and presents his manifesto on the "errors of socialism." Hayek argues that socialism has, from its origins, been mistaken on factual, and even on logical, grounds and that its repeated failures in the many different practical applications of socialist ideas that this century has witnessed were the direct outcome of these errors. He labels as the "fatal conceit" the idea that "man is able to shape the world around him according to his wishes."

Age of Anger: A History of the Present

How can we explain the origins of the great wave of paranoid hatreds that seem inescapable in our close-knit world - from American shooters and ISIS to Donald Trump, from a rise in vengeful nationalism to racism and misogyny on social media? In Age of Anger, Pankaj Mishra answers our bewilderment by casting his gaze back to the 18th century before leading us to the present.

William James, Charles Peirce, and American Pragmatism

C.S. Peirce was an authentic American genius who developed a tough minded pragmatism and a sweeping philosophy of evolutionary love. William James, a trained physician, carefully studied human experience, including the highest reaches of consciousness. Peirce and James established a rich, sensible, and pragmatic American approach to philosophy's traditional problems.

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

Why do we do the things we do? More than a decade in the making, this game-changing book is Robert Sapolsky's genre-shattering attempt to answer that question as fully as perhaps only he could, looking at it from every angle. Sapolsky's storytelling concept is delightful, but it also has a powerful intrinsic logic: He starts by looking at the factors that bear on a person's reaction in the precise moment a behavior occurs and then hops back in time from there in stages, ultimately ending up at the deep history of our species and its evolutionary legacy.

The Vanishing American Adult: Our Coming-of-Age Crisis - and How to Rebuild a Culture of Self-Reliance

In The Vanishing American Adult, Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse diagnoses the causes of a generation that can't grow up and offers a path for raising children to become active and engaged citizens. He identifies core formative experiences that all young people should pursue - hard work to appreciate the benefits of labor, travel to understand deprivation and want, the power of reading, the importance of nurturing your body - and explains how parents can encourage them.

Churchill and Orwell: The Fight for Freedom

Both George Orwell and Winston Churchill came close to death in the mid-1930s - Orwell shot in the neck in a trench line in the Spanish Civil War and Churchill struck by a car in New York City. If they'd died then, history would scarcely remember them. At the time Churchill was a politician on the outs, his loyalty to his class and party suspect. Orwell was a mildly successful novelist, to put it generously. No one would have predicted that by the end of the 20th century, they would be considered two of the most important people in British history.

A Horse Walks into a Bar

In a little dive in a small Israeli city, Dov Greenstein, a comedian a bit past his prime, is doing a night of stand-up. In the audience is a district court justice, Avishai Lazar, whom Dov knew as a boy, along with a few others who remember Dov as the awkward, scrawny kid who walked on his hands to confound the neighborhood bullies. Gradually, teetering between hilarity and hysteria, Dov's patter becomes a kind of memoir, taking us back into the terrors of his childhood.

The Dream of Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Philosophy

In The Dream of Enlightenment, Anthony Gottlieb expertly navigates a second great explosion of thought, taking us to northern Europe in the wake of its wars of religion and the rise of Galilean science. In a relatively short period - from the early 1640s to the eve of the French Revolution - Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, and Hume all made their mark. The Dream of Enlightenment tells their story and that of the birth of modern philosophy.

Critical Theory: A Very Short Introduction

Critical Theory emerged in the 1920s from the work of the Frankfurt School, the circle of German-Jewish academics who sought to diagnose - and, if at all possible, cure - the ills of society, particularly fascism and capitalism. In this book, Stephen Eric Bronner provides sketches of leading representatives of the critical tradition (such as George Lukács and Ernst Bloch, Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse and Jurgen Habermas) as well as many of its seminal texts and empirical investigations.

The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution

In this fascinating history spanning continents and centuries, historian David Wootton offers a lively defense of science, revealing why the Scientific Revolution was truly the greatest event in our history. The Invention of Science goes back 500 years in time to chronicle this crucial transformation, exploring the factors that led to its birth and the people who made it happen. Wootton argues that the Scientific Revolution was actually five separate yet concurrent events that developed independently.

In this masterpiece, Solzhenitsyn has orchestrated thousands of incidents and individual histories into one narrative of unflagging power and momentum. Written in a tone that encompasses Olympian wrath, bitter calm, savage irony, and sheer comedy, it combines history, autobiography, documentary, and political analysis as it examines in its totality the Soviet apparatus of repression from its inception following the October Revolution of 1917.

Publisher's Summary

Hardly a club in the conventional sense, the organization referred to in the title of this superb literary hybrid (part history, part biography, part philosophy) consisted of four members and probably existed for less than nine months. Yet its impact upon American intellectual life remains incalculable. Louis Menand masterfully weaves pivotal late 19th- and early 20th-century events, colorful biographical anecdotes, and abstract ideas into a narrative whole that both enthralls and enlightens.

What the Critics Say

Pulitzer Prize winner, History, 2002

"The Metaphysical Club is a compellingly vital account of how the cluster of ideas that came to be called pragmatism was forged from the searing experiences of its progenitors' lives." (Daniel Kevles, Yale University)"The Metaphysical Club is a brilliant reanimation of American pragmatism." (Richard Poirier)

Menand brilliantly weaves from the strands of late nineteenth century scientific and philosophical thought, the entire tapestry of America's secular theology -- democracy, free speech, enlightened self-interest, pragmatism, public schools and individual rights. Less than half way through this engaging discussion on the origins of the great American Experiment, I regained a small part of the national pride of which the sixties and seventies deprived us all. I also realized, to my great surprise, that the values I most dearly hold today were taught to me by the California public school system in the 1950's and 1960's -- that an eager, open-minded inquiry into the natural, social and political world is the best road toward wisdom, peace and prosperity for the greatest number; that diversity of opinion (like the diversity of the species) is the most important source of a society's health and longevity, and, that, as Oliver Wendell Holmes opined, it is certitude itself that inevitably leads to violence. Fascinating, stirring and entertaining. One of my new top ten books to take to a desert island.

Charles Sanders Peirce's name rhymes with "purse," not "fierce." The consistent mispronunciation on this recording is unfortunate, because Menand's book redresses a gaping hole in Americans' consciousness of their own philosophical heritage. Imagine Greeks ignorant of Plato or French of Descartes: such is the state of popular awareness regarding our own Big Thinkers Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and others. So: 5 stars for the book, 3 for the recording (which will put off those who've heard of CSP, and misinform the rest).

I really liked this book! Menand provides a compelling narrative that connects history, philosophy and notions of culture and society together in a way that I found fascinating. I was particularly interested in his treatment of Wendel Holmes; his ability to weave together biography and history create a picture of the profound effect this dynamic figure had on American culture. My only criticism of this book is the choice of narrator Henry Leyva. He is the worst narrator of any book i have ever listened to. His bizarre inflections make me cringe. I would give the book 6 stars and his narration one star, but if this is a period of time that you are interested in, the book is a must read (or listen?).

The narrator has a fine voice. The problem is that not all content is in the audible. I followed using the book and many parts of the book are skipped over or left out completly. Also, there is no way to choose by chapter or search by chapter and listen to specific selections. It seems it is seperated by parts rather than chapters which makes it hard if you are studying the book by specific chapters. When you try to forward to get to another chapter it jumps so far into the book that you cant keep track of where the narrator is or left off. I found this audible very frustrating and ended up having to start from the begining and waste a lot of time on listening to things I didn't need.

OK, "entertaining" is relative for any history of philosophy, but this book does a decent job of weaving together the lives and ideas of American thinkers at a critical period of American philosophy. The narrative flowed well (most of the time), and shed some light on both the personalities and ideas of these philosophers. I hadn't known much about Oliver Wendell Holme's life, and I found that section particularly interesting.

A good selection if you're looking for an enjoyable overview. Not so good if you're looking for in-depth understanding of these men's ideas (but in that case, you probably wouldn't go to a audio book summary anyway).

1) You need a ton of background knowledge
I was born outside america so most names did not mean much to me when I started the book. The book is clearly intended for somebody already familiar with the characters.

2) Narrator gets annoying
The tone of the narrator gets old. Repeats inflictions way too often, I would say every 4 sentences or so. I never finshed the book, when by error my MUVO would start playing it, I would get this very quick negative reaction, almost a pavlovian response to this guy's tone!

3) It is hard to follow
Within each chapter, it is never clear exactly where the author is going. That may work better on the print version, but when you have only partial attention dedicated to the book (i.e. commuting) it is just not good enough.

In sum, if you think you will enjoy this book, I would suggest you read it, the audio vesion has an annoying narrator and it is hard to follow.

In order to be prepared to read this book with engagement, you need to read this book first.

If you do not know anything about these men before you start, then you will not retain much of the information given to you. There is a wealth of useful historic perspective, and the ideas are fairly well-represented.

My recommendation is to get a corkboard and tack up pictures of the main guys, how they connect, and use a whiteboard to diagram the important tenets of their beliefs. Then you MIGHT have a chance at keeping track of everything. Had I done that, I would rate this 4 stars.

If you are wondering how the USA has become such a paradox of great ideas, movements, scientific progress, cruelties, selfishness, and weirdness all wrapped into one--this book tells at least a part of that story. In some ways the ideas of the Pragmatists were taken too far, in other ways (like the ideas of Peirce) were not taken far enough. The way of thinking from members of the metaphysical club is both like and unlike us today: "the relevance and strangeness are ever bound together in their [the Pragmatists] thought" (from the last sentence of the book). Peirce was not given credit as the founder of Semiotics nor was credited for his influence on quantum mechanics, DNA research, sentential logic, and computers. Some of the facts about his life seem a bit off from what I've read elsewhere. Overall great book that holds one's interest.